Polymer composites designed with 3D fibrous CNT“tracks”achieving excellent thermal conductivity and electromagnetic interference shielding efficiency

The rapid improvement in the running speed,transmission efficiency,and power density of miniaturized devices means that multifunctional flexible composites with excellent thermal management capability and high electromagnetic interference(EMI)shielding performance are urgently required.Here,inspired by the fibrous pathways of the human nervous system,a“core–sheath”fibers structured strategy was proposed to prepare thermoplastic polyurethane/polydopamine/carbon nanotube(TPU/PDA/CNT)composites film with thermal management capability and EMI shielding performance.Firstly,TPU@PDA@CNT fibers with CNT shell were prepared by a facile polydopamine-assisted coating on electrospun TPU fibers.Subsequently,TPU/PDA/CNT composites with three-dimensional(3D)fibrous CNT“tracks”are obtained by a hot-pressing process,where CNTs distributed on adjacent fibers are compactly contacted.The fabricated TPU/PDA/CNT composites exhibit a high in-plane thermal conductivity(TC)of 9.6 W/(m·K)at low CNT loading of 7.6 wt.%.In addition,it also presents excellent mechanical properties and excellent EMI shielding effectiveness of 48.3 dB as well as multi-source driven thermal management capabilities.Hence,this study provides a simple yet scalable technique to prepare composites with advanced thermal management and EMI shielding performance to develop new-generation wireless communication technologies and portable intelligent electronic devices.

A double crosslinking MXene/cellulose nanofiber layered film for improving mechanical properties and stable electromagnetic interference shielding performance

With the discovery of the two-dimensional(2D) MXene, it shows a great application potential in the field of electromagnetic interference(EMI) shielding, but the mechanical brittleness and easy oxidation of MXene limit its wide application. For this reason, a double crosslinking strategy is provided to solve the above problems in a nacre-like “brick-mortar” layered MXene/cellulose nanofiber(MXene/CNF) film.Typically, the film was firstly suffered by dopamine modification, then was further reinforced by secondary Ca^(2+)bridging, so as to obtain excellent mechanical properties and antioxidative EMI shielding performance. Comparing with the single crosslinking, the double crosslinking strategy reveals a higher efficiency in improving the mechanical property. The mechanical strength and toughness of the double crosslinking MXene/CNF film can increase to 142.2 MPa and 9.48 MJ/m^(3), respectively. More importantly, while achieving good mechanical properties, the MXene composite film still holds a very stable EMI shielding performance of more than 44.6 dB when suffering from the oxidation treatment of hightemperature annealing, showing excellent anti-oxidation ability and environment tolerance. Therefore,this work provides a universal but effective double crosslinking strategy to solve the mechanical brittleness and easy oxidation of MXene-based composites, thus showing a huge potential in flexible EMI shielding applications.